I invite you to my Salon, a cyberworld version of European and Asian gatherings in centuries past, where artists and intellectuals met in the home of an encouraging and inspiring host. It is my good fortune to be acquainted with many fascinating people, whom I will be pleased to introduce to the reader for your education and entertainment.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

All Hail The True Crime King

- Gary C. King!

Gary C. King is one of the world's foremost true crime writers and serial killers expert, a reputation he has earned over the last 33 years with the publication of more than 500 articles in true crime magazines in the United States, Canada, and England.King's many television appearances include Entertainment Tonight, Larry King Live, E!, BBC, Court TV, Inside Edition. I could go on but let's talk to man himself.

Madame Perry: Welcome to Madame Perry’s Salon, Gary,
it’s an honor to have you here. Please make yourself comfortable. My
first introduction to true crime books was the reigning queen of the genre –
Ann Rule. Let me share a quote from your website.

”King took over Ann Rule’s
job as Pacific Northwest stringer for True
Detective, Official Detective, Inside Detective, Front Page Detective, and Master
Detective magazines, writing hundreds of nonfiction articles under various
names until those magazines ceased publication in the mid-1990s.”

Did you personally know or
work with Rule?

Gary C King

Gary C. King: I do
know Ann. I’ve met her several times at conferences. However, I’ve never worked
with her, and have never wanted to work with her. Also, I cannot and do not
endorse her work because I do not care for it. It’s for those reasons, among
others, that I have never asked her for a blurb and would turn down one from
her if ever offered. After her days at True Detective ended, she tended to go
off in a direction that I find difficult to support. Now that I’ve gotten older,
however, there are several things I do not concern myself about: death and
dying, book sales, and Ann Rule! Some true crime authors seem to want to emulate
other true crime writers which is a mistake, in my opinion, and many have
certainly had their introduction to the genre via Ann’s books. A true crime
writer needs to find his or her own voice, and his or her own style. I try to
avoid most true crime writers as most have only self-serving interests and will
do just about anything to further their own careers, including breaking trusts
with other writers. A well-known true crime writer who also writes in the Young
Adult and fiction genres recently broke trust with me on Facebook, shortly after
DEAD OF NIGHT was released.As a result
I’ve had to reassess the importance, or perhaps lack thereof, of being friends
with those in the business!

MP: I’ve
read several of your books, Gary,
and I’d like to ask you about some of them. How do you choose to write about a
particular crime or killer?

GCK: Yes,
I know, Jennifer, lol, which I do sincerely appreciate. It’s always great to
connect with readers who like and appreciate one’s work. As for picking a
particular crime or criminal, I always try to choose crimes and/or criminals to
write about simply by picking those that interest me personally. If a case or a
killer does not interest me on some personal level, I simply do not write
about. That’s not to say that I’ve never written about a crime or criminal that
hasn’t interested me—I have, thanks to editors and their poor choices. When an
editor has picked cases for me, that interest at a personal level is missing
and it often shows in the finished product and reader acceptance. Editors think
they know everything, but I can say with all honesty and sincerity that they do
not. Sometimes, more often than not, the author knows best. I tend to prefer
writing about serial killers because, frankly, they are more interesting than a
typical murder, though there are always exceptions.

MP: Approximately
how much time is spent from deciding to write about a specific story,
researching it, and the finish line?

GCK:
Usually I spend anywhere from six months to a year researching and writing
about a case. That was the typical time spent when writing under contract for a
traditional publisher. Now that I’ve gone indie there’s no need to rush because
there are no deadlines to meet. I expect that I will be taking longer to finish
projects in the future because there is no longer any need to rush.

MP: Are
some stories more difficult than others? I’m thinking ofAngels Of Death, about 13-year-old Derek King and his 12-year-old
brother Alex King who were arrested after their father, Terry King, was
bludgeoned to death as he slept. The boys certainly had a less than ideal
childhood being abandoned by a drug addict mother and moved around to various
foster homes. Yet I got the sense that Terry was trying to keep his boys with
him and out of trouble. How does it feel to examine a case of coldblooded
killers who are still just children?

GCK: Cases
involving children, whether they are the murder victims or the killers, are
always the most difficult to research and write about due to the emotional
aspects involved. Terry King was not an ideal parent, but based on the
information I found he was trying to raise his boys as best he could as a
low-income single parent. I believe he protected his boys, but they saw things
differently, possibly due to outside influences such as Chavez and drug
experimentation at such an early age. They saw Terry King as being unreasonably
strict, but that was clearly not the case. Those boys came and went as they
pleased. In spite of Terry King’s shortcomings, many of which were through no
fault of his own, he did not deserve to be brutally beaten to death by his sons
and set afire afterward in an effort to cover up the crime. Those two boys
seemed incorrigible to me, and had turned into monsters by the time they killed
their father. You can read more about this case and the boys after their release from prison on my blog.

MP: A
different situation involving children, and one that the country followed on
the news as people kept a lookout for them, was recounted in Stolen In The Night. The relatives and
friends of young Shasta Groene and her brother Dylan were thrust into an unthinkable
nightmare when their family was murdered and the two children were missing.
Shasta was rescued when she was recognized in public and sexual psychopath
Joseph Edward Duncan III was arrested, charged and sentenced to death. During
your research did you find many situations in Duncan’s history that should have alerted
people to the kind of monster he was? Were there things people should have
noticed that, had the proper authorities been notified, could have saved this
family from such tragedy and heartbreak?

GCK: Like
many pedophiles, Duncan
managed to slip through the cracks of a system that was designed to keep
monsters like him out of circulation. His earlier crimes, such as those in Tacoma, Washington,
should have been ample warning that he was a danger to children. Sometimes,
even with the best efforts of law enforcement, the system fails. It failed with
Westley Allan Dodd, subject of my book DRIVEN TO KILL and who I interviewed at
length before his execution, and it failed with Duncan. As with Dodd, there were several
instances in which Duncan
should have been kept behind bars but was not. I still have problems with why
more information could not have been developed years earlier when the Martinez child was killed in Riverside County, California.
They had a description of the man, as well as a description of the car he was
driving. Perhaps the descriptions were inadequate to bring about identification
and arrest, but one can’t help but wonder if the ball may have been dropped
somewhere along the way. At least we can now be reasonably assured that Duncan will never hurt
another child. No family should ever have to endure the tragic consequences
that the Groene family, and other families like them, have gone through.

MP:MURDER IN HOLLYWOOD is about the killing of BonnyLee Bakley, wife of actor Robert Blake with whom she had a child. There are
people who have followed Blake since he was a young actor and have all manner
of speculations about him and his life. I was surprised at the complicated back
story on Bakley. Gary, was her background,
failed ambition and career as a con and extortionist fairly well known among Hollywood insiders?

GCK: MURDER
IN HOLLYWOOD is a book that my editor at St. Martin’s Press chose for me to
write about, and it was one chosen by an editor that I actually enjoyed doing
despite the fact that the publisher only gave me 30 days to write the book. The
publisher helped with the research, and I worked day and night to complete the
manuscript. The book was published before Blake’s trial, in which he was
acquitted. Though Blake himself was an interesting subject, even without a
murder investigation, it was Bakley’s activities or antics that really carried
the story. Due to the time limitations involved in writing the book, it was
clear to me that a number of people in Hollywood
knew about her but boiled the question down to just how much people may have
known about her. Bakley’s scam victims knew what she was to be sure, but how
much of what she was doing that may have filtered out to the so-called insiders
may never be known.

MP: A very
sad story of another type was that of Yale graduate Kathryn Ann Martini, a
young beautiful woman with a bright career ahead in banking. Smart, focused and

hardworking, it seems her mistake was falling in love with and marrying Michael
David Lissy. Murder In Room 305
details the foul plan of this sleazy, coke-addicted miscreant who planned the
violent death of his bride of only a year in order to collect the hefty life
insurance policy he’d taken out on her. Did you talk to many of Kathryn Ann
Martini’s family and friends? So many people are affected deeply for life after
a tragedy like this, aren’t they?

GCK: I
talked to some of Kathryn’s family and friends, but most of the information
came out of public files. Her family was deeply affected by her murder,
especially her parents. One of her sisters contacted me after the book’s
publication, and related some of their feelings to me. In respect of their
privacy and since the information was not contained in the book, I feel I
should keep those revelations private. David Wilson, the killer, was paroled in
the late 1990s. Lissy, I’ve heard, was paroled in April of this year. Both of
those paroles must have added to the hurt and pain experienced by Kathryn’s
family.

MP:You already know that every time I start one of your books I want to read the whole story at once! That’s when I send
you tweets saying once again you kept me up all night, and your reply is
usually along the lines of “It’s my job!”

Thank you for the excellent
research and writing in your books as well as the sensitivity to the loved ones
on all sides of the stories who carry the grief and pain for a lifetime. When I
first interviewed true crime authors, there were people who accused me of
glorifying or sensationalizing crime. So I always add the reasons I read and
share the books.

Yes, I’m fascinated by the
unpredictability of human behavior, to put it very simply. However, I don’t
believe I’ve ever read an account of true crime where there weren’t several
hints, red flags and outright warnings of someone’s potential for violence
maybe for years before a crime occurs. And for whatever reason no information
was shared or action taken which could have prevented it.

So I repeat the simple words
that if you see something, say something. And if you see or know something but
don’t want to get involved – too late, you’re already involved and have a
responsibility.

I wish you much continued
success in your career, Gary,
and hope you’ll return soon.

GCK:
Thanks, Jennifer. I’ll be happy to return here anytime!MP: Gary C. King's website keeps readers up to date on his books plus videos, podcasts, blog posts, and a page of victims' resources. Follow him on Twitter and 'Like' him FaceBook. He likes communicating with his readers so leave a comment here. Like most of our guests he'll probably reply.Buy his books! Oh, and don't forget to keep your flashlight by the bed.